Another Final Fantasy done and dusted. Final Fantasy IV is only the second FF game that I've conquered, so it's been a pretty eventful year for me. So, what did I make of it? Read on and find out... (For reference, I played through the Playstation version that came in the European Edition of Final Fantasy Anthology, so it's faithful to the original SNES game. No extra dungeons or mechanics. It...
Story The game takes place in late-1940s Los Angeles. You play as Cole Phelps, a police officer with World War 2 experience. He starts off as a patrolman, but it doesn't take long for him to be promoted to Detective. While you initially work in the 'Traffic' department, you get switched to other departments when the time is right. The story is broken up into cases. Along with focusing on the ca...
My blogs have been appearing thick and fast lately. There WILL be a bigger break between this and my next one (due to the game I'll be playing). Story The game acts a sequel to Hard Boiled, John Woo's action film from 1992. You play as Tequila (Chow Yun Fat), a renegade cop in Hong Kong. The game starts with Tequila knowingly walking into a trap. He hopes to save a police officer, but it doesn'...
...told you it wouldn't be too long. XD I must admit, I wasn't quite expecting to finish Enslaved only a day after my Yakuza 4 blog. I had no trouble getting back into Enslaved and I managed to complete the remainder of the game within three and a half hours. I had a good time doing so. Story You play Monkey, who gets 'enslaved' by a woman called Trip. Using a slave headband, she forces Monkey...
While waiting for the 360 to arrive, I decided to have a good shot at Yakuza 4. I bought it a while ago and even played a little bit, but something else came up. This time, I have seen it through to completion....and I thoroughly enjoyed it. It was a real ride. Story The story takes place in the fictional district of Kamurocho, which is roughly based on Kabukicho in Shinjuku, Japan. You initial...
10 years ago, I picked up Grandia on a whim from a dedicated games shop. I hadn't heard of it before, but I was in the mood for an RPG and the cover/back did enough to sell it to me. I also remember it being £7, so I couldn't really go wrong. I ended up being really pleased with my purchase. I thought it was a fun RPG with a nice storyline. However, as my attitude towards finishing games left a...
...well, it’s been a while. I really underestimated how long it would take me to complete Wild Arms 3. Any regrets? None at all. I know I’ve said this before, but the 360 suddenly becoming useless might have been the best thing that’s happened to me for a while. If it didn’t, I may have never played the real of gem of a game that Wild Arms 3 is. It really surpassed my expectations going into it...
Just thought I'd give all my followers a brief update. I don't have much to say (hence why I haven't bothered posting this in the forums), but I thought it'd be better than nothing for a few months. I'm about 20 hours into Wild Arms 3 now. From what I can tell, there's still quite a bit to go. During Euro 2012, I didn't really play it that much, but I've made a bit more time for it lately. I on...
This week, I've been thinking about the weekly format of the blog. While it worked pretty well when I was playing shorter games, it doesn't seem to make a lot of sense for RPGs. There's only so much I can say about a game, so it becomes a struggle when I play a game for several weeks. As a result, I've decided to stop the weekly blogs in favour of more of a 'start/complete a game' blog format....
Pumping this out slightly earlier than usual, but I thought as I may as well. I have enough stuff to type about and it's not going to change by tomorrow, so... After ditching Dark Cloud last week, I moved onto Wild Arms 3. As you may know, it came 2nd in the poll I did. Do I regret my decision to go with it? Not at all. I've been pleasantly surprised with what the game has to offer. I only play...
Last week, I took down yet another RPG. The fact that it was one of my favourite RPGs was the icing on the cake. After failing to complete it in 2005, I managed to take down the final boss with ease. I’m still surprised at how short it was, though. It only took 22 hours for me to complete. Still, I’d recommend checking it out if you’re looking for an unusual RPG. Small word of warning to anyone...
I've played about 9 hours of Shadow Hearts so far. I haven't played it as much as I would have liked, but I'm happy that I've made some progress. I'm glad I decided to replay it. While the voice acting is terrible (hilarious in parts), there are a lot of good points about it. This week, I’ll talk about the unique features of Shadow Hearts. I only touched upon them last week, so I thought I’d go...
I completed it in the early hours of this morning. I’m very satisfied with the experience. I don’t regret picking it up. It’s not perfect by any means, but it’s still a great RPG. If you’re interested in playing it, I’d buy it now before the restock copies disappear. I expect it’ll become pretty steep once that happens. While it's a good game, I'm not sure if it's £60+ good... Pros First and fo...
Short blog this week. Nothing much happened and there isn't a great deal on my mind. I might do another blog during the week on a random subject... My opinion of the game hasn’t really changed much since last week. I’m still enjoying it. The battle system has continued to be satisfying. While the battles have been easy on the most part, I needed to level up for one of the boss fights. It was st...
Thanks to everyone who responded to the time travel blog during the week. I just thought I’d throw out a random subject that’s been in my head lately. I might do more blogs like that whenever time permits. But now... After about a month or so, I’ve finally completed FFV. Going into it, I wasn’t expecting to enjoy myself as much as I did. It didn’t quite end up in my ‘favourite RPGs of all time’...
For as long as I can remember, I've always been interested in time travel. I don't think about it every single day, but whenever a product with time travel presents itself to me, I'm always curious to check it out. My favourite time travel film (and my favourite overall) is the 1960 adaptation of The Time Machine by H.G Wells. I think that's what really sparked off my interest. I'd definitely r...
First of all, thanks for the response to my last blog. Thanks to ZombiePie for mentioning the blog on Twitter, too (and this week's community spotlight). I enjoyed responding to all your comments about JRPGs. I could do it all day. As a result, I'm going to make one or two permanent changes to my future entries. I'll be looking to add more stuff than just a weekly round-up. I like discussing va...
A Week of Gaming' will be taking a break this week. While I have advanced with FFV, I don't have an awful lot to say. I decided the best thing would be to put it off for a week. Instead, I'll talk about something close to my heart... The Glorious World of JRPGs I was about 12 when I first discovered the world of JRPGs. The game in question? Final Fantasy VII. I first saw FFVII thanks to some gu...
Final Fantasy V I've managed to get pretty far into it now. I'm still enjoying it, but my main problem with it is that it's not obvious where to go at certain points. I realise that it was a common issue for older games, though. You were to expected to find things out yourself with very little hand-holding. I'll be honest; I've had to look up what to do next at several parts already (just to mo...
Enslaved Here is the part where I would have talked about Enslaved. Heck, I may have even completed it by now. One slight problem occurred, though... ...my 360 is no more. It has ceased to be. Kicked the bucket. Bereft of life, it rests in peace. It is an Ex-Xbox. This is the third 360 that has failed on me since I bought my first one in 2006. Despite it being my primary console by some margin,...
Mass Effect I managed to complete it on Thursday. :D Overall, I found it a very satisfying game. I'll definitely be picking up the sequel as soon as I can. I know, I'm so up-to-date... SPOILER WARNING: Click here to reveal hidden content. I got the Paragon ending. Despite the council treating me like mud near the end, I decided to show some character and save them anyway. Upon humans joining th...
Mass Effect I'm really glad I chose to go back to Mass Effect. It's proving really worthwhile so far. Just goes to show that I don't necessarily need to buy any new games right now. There's probably a whole lot of great games that I've yet to play. I certainly don't have a shortage of choice in my games library right now... Like with most games of this kind, I've decided to play a good characte...
This is the start of a new feature of my blog. Each week (or near enough) , I’ll be going over what I’ve played recently. I’ll try to keep things spoiler-free. When I need to discuss later or key parts of the story, I’ll hide them with spoiler tags. Some of the games I’ve played may have been out for a while, but I appreciate that some people haven't got round to them yet (like me). Bulletstorm...
In this blog entry, I’m going to talk about the games that excite me the most this year. I’m sure more will crop up later, but here’s my list as it stands. Lollipop Chainsaw If what I’ve seen so far is anything to go by, this game is going to be right up my street. I’ve been a fan of Suda 51’s games since I played No More Heroes on the Wii. I’ve also recently played Shadows of the Damned (sligh...
This is my first blog at Giant Bomb. I've blogged elsewhere in the past, but it's been a while. I aim to cover a variety of subjects in my blogs. Everything from what I'm playing at a certain point in time to what I think about the latest gaming trends. I'm very passionate about games, so I enjoy writing about them. ...oh, and I'll try and throw in some humour here and there...can't forget that...